Ghetto Blasting

Ghettos exist to protect communities and imprison them. On the one
hand, a ghetto allows for shared language, social norms and cultural
experience. Whether sharing religion, race, sexual orientation, or
professions, ghetto occupants feel safe and band together to defend
lives that fall outside the societal box. This is true if you’re
talking about tourist-friendly groupings like Chinatowns and Little
Italys, academic or trade districts, the so-called “inner city,” and
the “gayborhoods” of every metropolis. Ghettos organize clans into
demographic blocks for their own protection and viability. Cool,
right? On the other hand, there’s a dark side to this impulse.
Ghettos divide unassimilated groups from the larger community,
“quarantining” the scary, exotic Other so that nothing unusual or
unfamiliar mingles or interferes with the moron majority status quo. That sucks.

Now, to be clear, I’m talking to writers of LGBT romance here.
Readers and journos might enjoy me ranting. But in everything that
follows, I’m speaking to my genre colleagues.

For a decade or more, all LGBT romance has been operating in a
ghetto which harms our sales, our audience-base, and our public
perception. We fall in the cracks between hetero romance and general
LGBT fiction. Both of those groups have deep ambivalence about us as
a presence. The average romance reader remains blissfully ignorant
of the existence of LGBT romance and the average readers of LGBT
literary fiction looks down their noses at “trashy” romances. Those
preconceptions harm us, daily, and the only material solution is to
address them professionally and dynamically.

The same day I signed my contract for
Hot Head, my first gay romance, I registered for membership
with the Rainbow
Romance Writers, which (for those of you who don’t know) is the
RWA chapter formed expressly for and by professional authors
of LGBT romance. To me, joining seemed like a no-brainer,
The Romance Writers of America is one of the most powerful trade
associations for professional authors, impacting author treatment,
market research, and distribution for millions and millions of
books. For LGBT romance writers to have a place at that table is
beyond important if we want to survive and thrive.

Why bother with the
Rainbow Romance Writers (RRW) and by extension, the Romance
Writers of America? The members of the RRW fight like hell to end
the kind of amateurish insularity that keeps us in our tiny ghetto.
Consider the enormous benefits:

Advocacy and solidarity in the LGBT
and romance communities

Real world leverage and access afforded by a national organization
with real clout

Research and retailer campaigns to improve visibility of titles and
better categorization

Outreach and education within and beyond our little pocket universe

The RRW is the only organization created entirely to support
professional authors of LGBT romance. Moreover, the RRW is working
to raise visibility of all books in LGBT romance, not just its
members. Even if you aren’t a member the RRW works on behalf of all
LGBT romance writers. You should join because you think your writing
means something and deserves to be seen outside of a ghetto.

Now…I'm biased, because in my second year of membership, I've just
been elected VP of the Rainbow Romance Writers chapter and we've had
a kickass two months to start the RRW year, so feel free to take
this as a subjective call to arms. If you are a career-focused
writer of LGBT romance and you aren’t a member, I gotta ask you why.

The new RRW board just kicked off a slate of actions with the goal
of raising visibility for our genre in 2012: at national events in
the LGBT and romance communities, doing market research, media
education, and advocacy for members. We're really committed to
upping the stakes for LGBT romance and seeing career-focused authors
claim their share of the national attention given to romance in
general. The genre has evolved and the RRW chapter has done
likewise; we're no longer content to just say "our books are here
and queer," and have gotten active in making ourselves heard. I've
said it over and over, but our genre is evolving rapidly and
professionalism will play the pivotal role in our survival ratio and
the success rates in years to come.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Wait a minute. I’m doing just fine. My books sell. I don’t have any
questions. I like sticking to a small community hidden from the eyes
of the world.” That may be, but don’t for a moment think that the
ongoing cataclysm in mainstream publishing is not about to rock the
LGBT romance boat in a big way. Let’s be frank: Anyone who thinks
the big six publishers move into epublishing won’t crucify the small
presses and authors who don’t live on the NYTimes bestseller list is
a fucking dingdong. If you are a professional author of LGBT romance
then you should be fighting like hell to make sure that we maintain
our place at the table.

To join the RRW, membership in the national
organization is required, of course. How can we be taken seriously
as professionals if we won’t have hard conversations with other
professionals? Professional writers of LGBT romance have every
reason to join the RWA and transform it from the inside for our
mutual benefit...so that we can compete for shelf space and media
coverage effectively.

I’ve heard authors object to joining the RWA
because “The RWA is old-fashioned and discriminatory. I refuse to
give my money to an organization that doesn’t treat LGBT romance
equally.” To that I’ll say, if you want the world to change then
fucking change it. Stonewall did not happen because a bunch of drag
queens decided to stay home and mix their own drinks back in 1969.
They made themselves heard and they invented a better future for all
LGBT people.

You want tolerance, freedom, visibility? Then stand in
the damn light.

Some writers have said that they don’t join the RRW
because they don’t want another loop of redundant promo or hardsell
announcements. We agree, adamantly. Anyone who is a member of RRW
will tell you it is much more than a social club or a shill farm. Do
we network and help each other? Hell yeah, but that is the least of
our business. Our entire mission targets career-focused writers who
want to get beyond the postage-stamp, narrow-cast
ghetto we've
occupied since M/M invented itself in the margins of slash and
fanfiction. The RRW has active discussions about craft, business,
promotional strategy, and more…but we are promo and spam-free. We
stay on topic, and those topics concern every person committed to
writing LGBT romance professionally.

Look: I was raised in an LGBT home. I HATE ghettos, and I've zero intention of writing and
publishing in one. Not to sound like an activist, but my membership
in the RWA's LGBT romance chapter puts my work and my passion in the
path of thousands and thousands of people who have never even heard
of LGBT romance, in a larger organization that literally affects
bookstore policy and media context for romance nationwide. FWIW, the
RWA is one of the most powerful author organizations because of the
marketshare of romance within the publishing industry and the
leverage that afford them with media and publishing. Are they
reactionary and slow to evolve? Fuck yes. But they are evolving and
we are claiming a place at a very influential table, one action, one
reader, one article at a time.

What's so great about the RWA and (by
extension) the RRW? It's a group of professional writers getting
shit done that will radically transform the way our books get read,
reviewed, sold, and by whom. We don’t have to be a quirky pocket
universe in publishing. The time has come for career-focused writers
of LGBT romance to play in farther fields and for bigger stakes.

RRW members have been kicking all kinds of ass for the genre and
benefitting their own books thereby. Changes are happening, and not
by accident or without effort. For my part, I tend to think of the
RRW more as a group of hilarious activists putting LGBT romance into
unexpected hands all over the damn place. The recent kerfuffle about
the discriminatory RWI/MTM contest got our genre international
coverage in the New York Daily News and in the (UK) Guardian; RRW
members (and the chapter) got shout-outs in major newspapers that
had an explosive impact on visibility. That response came together
with coordinated efforts and RRW members asking the right questions
of the right people.

The advocacy projects we have underway are
aimed at improving the access and visibility of ALL writers of LGBT
romance, not just members. We're campaigning with online vendors to
improve categorization and labeling to make our books easier to
find; we're publishing articles in chapter newsletters and magazines
all over the place; we’re actively working with GLAAD for media
education and advocacy about LGBT romance; this in turn raises
visibility of all LGBT romance with millions of people currently
unaware of its existence; we've helped members with contract
problems and done outreach with new markets and nonprofits...

As my mother used to say, "If you always do what you always did, then you
always get what you always got.”

If you’re happy living in a ghetto… if writing is a hobby and you don’t take it too seriously… if you
don’t mind your books only reaching a closed circle of readers who
already know about them… if you want our creative community to stay
insular and inbred… if you want our publishers to be crushed by the
incursions of the big six in the next five years…then by all means,
stay where you are and do what you’re doing.

But if you're a career-focused writer of LGBT romance and you're
serious about
becoming a better writer, reaching a wider readership, dismantling
assumptions within our industry, and excelling as an artist and a
professional, the
Rainbow Romance Writers is worth much more than just a look.